First things first. I am oyil. Yes, the one who created and uploaded sketchup models of ROTA rims into 3D Warehouse. I have been a silent sketchup user since version 5. As I am a car freak, even though i dont own one, I pretty much, adore things with connection to cars... which now includes designing my very own using sketchup. I realized i needed several different cad programs to do chassis design for strength, kinematics, aesthetics. But these are all pricey, and the free ones are really hard to learn. Then I discovered http://www.car-stuff.info/fea.htm and continued the idea.

Here's a plugin that lets us use sketchup as a frontend to the free Frame3DD frame analysis software. Basically, you draw edges that represents your frame members,.. attach material properties to the edges,... apply forces to the frame,... then extract the information to a format that is accepted by Frame3dd. The plugin will execute Frame3dd by itself. The results can be plotted using gnuplot for visualization of dynamic characteristics of frame design.

LIMITATIONS:(1)Currently, the "Apply Material" function only applies material properties of a 1"x1"x2mm steel SHS to the selected frame members.Use mm as units in your model. (2)"Apply Constraint" function applies rigid constraints. i.e. no movement allowed for the x, y, and z directions(3)"Apply Force" function can only be applied to nodes.(4) Amount of members. I havent tried going over 300 frame members. It might be too much for Frame3dd.I hope to add more of frame3dd's features available in the future, if time permits.

CONFIGURATION:A config.ini file is needed by the plugin for it to know where to dump the output files for Frame3dd processing. [3DD_APP]Path=<path to installed Frame3dd> - ex. c:\\Program Files\\Frame3dd\\

I would prefer seeing the result (even better - immediate feedback) directly in sketchup, like an old game called bridge builder - where you drew lines and could see their condition under pressure by changing their color from green to red. this could help in the initial 'sketchup' phase of designing structure

I would prefer seeing the result (even better - immediate feedback) directly in sketchup, like an old game called bridge builder - where you drew lines and could see their condition under pressure by changing their color from green to red. this could help in the initial 'sketchup' phase of designing structure

i agree

Sketchup can be a much better viewer than GNUplot; i have a structural analysis software, with post processing features, but for textile structures for example, the result is better when i import the nodes position (X Y Z) output from the structural analysis software, into sketchup, using "cloud_v8.rbs" and "TIG_points_cloud_triangulation.rb"

The result is much more realistic

Apart from that, congratulation to Oyil for this plugin ! it widens, even more if possible, sketchup potential applications

of course, this is childs-play compared to frame3dd possibilities, I just wish for a quick force visualization integrated into sketchup - to be able to optimize design of structure and explore possibilities. ideally this should happen in real-time within sketchup

Dont know if this post is dead - oyil, I am trying to use your plugin for simple two dimensional truss analysis - run the plugin - Frame3dd starts processign then error message: "the number of load cases must be at least one". Any ideas of what may be wrong? I have created the geometery, applied material, set constraints and loads.

Loveday wrote:Dont know if this post is dead - oyil, I am trying to use your plugin for simple two dimensional truss analysis - run the plugin - Frame3dd starts processign then error message: "the number of load cases must be at least one". Any ideas of what may be wrong? I have created the geometery, applied material, set constraints and loads.

load case on 3dd iput file maybe missing or the entire data was not written to the temporary 3dd import file.